Sepulchre (8 page)
With her sharp cheekbones, clear brown eyes and petite figure, Meredith looked more like a senior in high school than a twenty-eight-year-old academic. At home, she still carried her id if she wanted to be sure of getting served in a bar. She reached up to the luggage rack for her jacket and tote bag, revealing a tanned, flat stomach between her green top and Banana Republic denims, aware that the four guys across the aisle were staring.
A wall of sound hit her the second she stepped down to the platform. People shouting, rushing, crowds every place, waving. Everybody in a hurry. Announcements were blaring out over the loudspeakers. Information about the next departure, introduced by a kind of fanfare on a glockenspiel. It was totally crazy after the hushed silence of the train.
Hoisting her bags high on each shoulder, she followed the signs across the station concourse and got in line for a taxi. The guy in front of her was shouting into his cell and waving a Gitane wedged deep between his fingers. Blue-white tendrils of vanilla-scented smoke twisted up into the night air, silhouetted against the balustrades and shutters of the buildings opposite.
She gave the address to the driver, a hotel in the 4th arrondissement, on the rue du Temple in the Marais district, which she'd picked for its central location. It was good for the regular tourist stuff if she had time - the Centre Pompidou and Musee Picasso were nearby - but mostly for the Conservatoire, and the various concert halls, archives and private addresses she needed to visit for Debussy.
The driver put her tote bag in the trunk, then slammed her door and climbed in. Meredith was thrown back in her seat as the taxi accelerated sharply into the crazy Parisian traffic. She put her arm protectively around her purse and hugged it tight to her, watching as the cafes, the boulevards, the scooters and streetlamps zoomed past.
Meredith felt she knew Debussy's muses, mistresses, lovers, wives -Marie Vasnier, Gaby Dupont, Therese Roger, his first wife Lilly Texier, his second, Emma Bardac, his beloved daughter Chouchou. Their faces, their stories, their features were right there, at the front of her mind - the dates, the references, the music. She had a first draft of the biography and she was pretty satisfied with how the text was shaping up. What she needed now was to bring them to life on the page, a little more colour, a little nineteenth-century atmosphere.
From time to time, she worried that Debussy's life was more real to her than her own day to day. Then, she dismissed the thought. It was good to be focused. If she wanted to hit her deadline, she needed to keep at it for just a while longer.
It was all straight lines and glass; stylish, minimalist. The lobby was filled with blocky outsize chairs covered in black and white dogtooth check or lime-green or brown and white pinstripes, arranged around smoked-glass tables. Art magazines, copies of Vogue and Paris-Match were stacked up in brushed chrome racks on the walls. Huge, supersized lampshades hung from the ceiling. Trying too hard.
At the far end of the small lobby was the bar, with a line of men and women drinking. Lots of toned flesh and good tailoring. Gleaming cocktail shakers stood on the slate counter; the glass bottles reflected in the mirror beneath blue neon lights. The rattle of ice and the chink of glasses. ' Meredith pulled a credit card from her wallet, different from the one she'd been using in the UK, just in case she'd hit her limit, and approached the desk. The clerk, sleek in a grey pantsuit, was friendly and efficient. Meredith was pleased her rusty French was understood. She hadn't spoken the language in a while. Got to be a good sign.
Turning down the offer of help with her bags, she made a note of the password for wireless computer access, then took the narrow elevator to the third floor and walked along a dark passageway until she found the number she was looking for.
The room was pretty small, but clean and stylish, everything decorated in brown, cream and white. Housekeeping had switched on the lamp beside the bed. Meredith ran her hand over the sheets. Good-quality bed linen, comfortable. Lots of space in the closet, not that she needed it. She dropped her tote on the bed, took her laptop out of her purse, put it on the glass-topped desk and plugged it in to charge.
Then she went to the window, pulled back the net curtain and opened the shutters. The sound of traffic surged into the room. Down below in the street, a glamorous young crowd was out enjoying the surprisingly mild October evening. Meredith leaned out. She could see in all four directions. A department store on the corner opposite, its shutters closed. Cafes and bars, a patisserie and a deli were all open, and music filtered out on to the sidewalks. Orange streetlamps, neon, everything floodlit or silhouetted. Night-time tones.
With her elbows resting on the black wrought-iron balustrade, Meredith just watched awhile, wishing she had enough energy to go down and join in. Then she rubbed her arms, realising her skin was covered in goosebumps.
Ducking back inside, she unpacked, putting her few clothes in the closet, then headed for the bathroom. It was concealed behind a curious concertina-style door in the corner of the room, again aggressively minimalist in white ceramic. She took a quick shower, then, wrapped in a towelling robe and with thick woollen socks on her feet, poured herself a glass of red wine from the minibar and sat down to check her mail.
She got a connection fast enough, but there was nothing much - a couple of emails from friends asking how things were going, one from her mother, Mary, checking she was OK, an advertising flyer for a concert. Meredith sighed. Nothing from her publisher. The first part of the advance had been due to go into her account at the end of September, but it hadn't come through by the time she left. It was now the end of October and she was getting jumpy. She'd sent a couple of reminders and been reassured everything was in hand. Her financial situation wasn't too bad, at least not quite yet. She'd got her credit cards and she could always borrow a little from Mary, if absolutely necessary, to tide her over. But she'd be relieved to know the money was on its way.
She leapt out of bed. She ran a brush through her black hair, tied it back in a ponytail, and pulled on blue jeans, a green sweater and her jacket. She checked she'd got all she needed in her bag - wallet, map, notebook, sunglasses, camera - then, feeling good about the day ahead, was out of the door, taking the stairs two at a time down to the lobby.
It was a perfect fall day, bright and sunny and fresh. Meredith headed for the brasserie opposite for breakfast. Rows of round tables with faux marble tops, pretty though, were set out on the sidewalk to catch the best of the morning sun. Inside, all was lacquered brown wood. A long zinc counter ran the length of the room and two middle-aged waiters in black and white were moving with astonishing speed through the crowded restaurant.
Meredith got the last free table outside, next to a group of four guys in vests and tight leather pants. They were all smoking and drinking espressos and glasses of water. To her right, two thin and immaculately dressed women sipped cafe noisette from tiny white cups. She ordered the petit-dejeuner complet - juice, baguette with butter and jelly, pastries and cafe au lait then pulled out her notebook, a replica of Hemingway's famous moleskin jotters. She was already on number three of a pack of six, bought on special offer from Barnes & Noble for this trip. She wrote everything down, however small or insignificant. Later, she transferred the notes she thought significant to her laptop.
She planned to spend the day visiting the private locations important to Debussy, as opposed to the big public spaces and concert halls. She'd take a few photos, see how far she got. If it turned out to be a waste of time, she'd think again, but it seemed a sensible way to organise her time.
Debussy had been born in St-Germain-en-Laye on 22nd August 1862, in what was now commuter belt. But he was a Parisian through and through and spent pretty much all his fifty-five years in the capital, from his childhood home in the rue de Berlin to the house at 80 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, where he'd died on 25th March 1916, four days after the German long-range bombardment of Paris had begun. The last stop on her itinerary, maybe when she came back at the end of the week, would be the Cimetiere de Passy in the 16th arrondissement where Debussy was buried.
Meredith took a deep breath. She felt right at home in Paris, in Debussy's city. Everything had been so crazy leading up to her departure, she could hardly believe she was actually here. She sat still a moment, just enjoying the scene and being right at the heart of things. Then she got out her map and spread it out on the table. The corners draped and crackled over the edge like a colourful cloth.
She tucked a few strands of hair that had come loose back behind her ears and perused the map. The first address on her list was the rue de Berlin, where Debussy had lived with his parents and siblings from the early 1860s until he was twenty-nine years old. It was just around the block from the apartment of the Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme, where Debussy had attended the famous Tuesday afternoon salons. After World War I, like many French streets with German names, it had been renamed and was now the rue de Liege.
Meredith followed the line with her finger to the rue de Londres, where Debussy had taken a furnished apartment with his lover Gaby Dupont in January 1892. Next came an apartment in the tiny rue Gustave-Dore in the 17th, then just around the corner to the rue Cardinet, where they lived until Gaby walked out on him on New Year's Day 1899. Debussy remained at the same address for the next five years with his first wife, Lilly, before that relationship too broke down.
In terms of distances and planning, Paris was pretty manageable. Everything was within walking distance, helped by the fact that Debussy had spent his life within a relatively small area, a star-like quartet of streets around the Place d'Europe on the boundary of the 8th and 9th arrondissements, overlooking the Gare Saint-Lazare.
Meredith ringed each of the locations on the map with black marker pen, looked at the pattern a moment, then decided she'd start at the furthest point and work her way back in the direction of the hotel.
She packed up, struggling to get the map to fold in the right place. She finished her coffee, brushed the buttery flakes of croissant from her sweater and licked her fingers one by one, resisting the temptation to order anything else. Despite her slim and lithe appearance, Meredith loved food. Pastries, bread, cookies, all the stuff that nobody was supposed to eat any more. She left a ten-euro note to cover the check, adding a handful of small change for a tip, then set off.
It took her just short of fifteen minutes to reach the Place de la Concorde. From there she turned north, up past the Palais de la Madeleine, an extraordinary church designed like a Roman temple, then along the Boulevard Malesherbes. After about five minutes she turned left into the Avenue Velasquez towards the Parc Monceau. After the roar of traffic on the main thoroughfare, the imposing dead-end street seemed eerily silent. Plane trees with variegated bark, mottled like the back of an old man's hand, lined the sidewalk. Many of the trunks were tagged with graffiti. Meredith glanced up at the white embassy buildings, impassive and somehow disdainful, overlooking the gardens. She stopped and took a couple of photos, just in case she didn't remember the layout later.
A sign on the entrance into the Parc Monceau announced winter and summer opening and closing hours. Meredith walked through black wrought-iron gates into the wide green space, immediately finding it easy to imagine Lilly or Gaby or even Debussy himself, hand in hand with his daughter, strolling along the generous pathways. Long white summer dresses swirling in the dust or ladies sitting beneath brimmed hats on one of the green metal benches set all along the edges of the lawns. Retired generals in military uniform, and the dark-eyed children of diplomats rolling wooden hoops under the watchful gaze of their governesses. Through the trees, she glimpsed the columns of a folly in the style of a Greek temple. A little further away there was a stone pyramid icehouse, fenced off from the public, and marble statues of The Muses. Across the park, tawny ponies roped in a line carried excited children up and down the gravel.
Meredith took plenty of photographs. Apart from the clothes and the cell phones, the Parc Monceau seemed hardly changed from the photos she'd seen of a hundred years ago. Everything was so vivid, so clear.
Having spent half an hour wandering in contented circles through the park, she finally made her way out and found herself at the subway station on the north side. The sign MONCEAU LIGNE NO. 2 above the entrance, with its elaborate art nouveau design, looked like it might have been there since Debussy's day. She took a couple more shots, then crossed the busy intersection and walked into the 17th arrondissement. The neighbourhood seemed drab after the fin de siecle elegance of the park. The stores looked cheap, the buildings unremarkable.
She found the rue Cardinet easily and identified the block where, more than a hundred years ago, Lilly and Debussy had lived. She felt a prick of disappointment. From the outside, it too was plain, nondescript, dull. There was no character to it. In letters, Debussy talked of the modest apartment with affection, describing the watercolours on the walls, the oil paintings. For a moment she thought of ringing the bell and seeing if she could persuade anyone to let her in to look around. It was here, after all, that Debussy had written the work that had transformed his life, his only opera, Pelleas et Melisande. It was here that Lilly Debussy had shot herself, days before their fifth wedding anniversary, when she realised Debussy was leaving her for good to set up home with the mother of one of his piano pupils, Emma Bardac. Lilly survived, but the surgeons never got the bullet out. Meredith thought the fact that she had lived the rest of her life with a physical reminder of Debussy lodged inside her was, somehow, the most poignant - although awful - part of the whole story.